Chester Bennington is wailing, “The sun goes down, I feel the light betray me” on your radio; the cold beads of sweat that form on your forehead agree with Bennington– for the nth time you have a long exam tomorrow morning and you are nowhere near prepared. You call on every divinity, pray to every God, to be miraculously given effective study skills; however, you will settle for time to stop so you can cram longer.

Hypothetically, if time did stop, how can you make up for lost time and acquire effective study skills? How about through M.U.R.D.E.R.?

M.U.R.D.E.R. are:

Mood:
Think of studying as a date that you would like to impress and go out of your way. Create the right ambience. Pick a place that can help you concentrate, most people need a place where there is silence but there are a handful of people that need noise to concentrate. Play some music to sustain your mood.

Understand:
Get yourself a marker and mark areas of your text that strikes you as important; or make an outline of the material.

Recall:
Stop every once in a while to paraphrase what you have read in your own words; if you can express the idea in your own words, it means you have understood what you were studying and have also memorized it.

Digest:
You can also mark concepts or ideas that you did not understand and look it up further or ask for a second opinion from a classmate or the professor.

Expand:
Try to see the connection between the material you are currently studying and your previous lessons; or try to see the relevance of your text in your life.

Review:
Review the materials you have studied; ideally, you should be reviewing the highlighted texts and the notes you have made instead of reading everything again.

Whether you have a big exam or you just want to maintain a respectable GPA, always keep MURDER at the back of your mind: MURDER, the only crime that pays.

Education---like democracy, free markets, freedom of the press, and "universal human rights" --- is one of those subjects whose virtue is considered self-evident. So is the superiority of the industrially advanced countries in attaining them. Consequently, any package that arrives with one of these magic labels on it, automatically qualifies for the "green channel" at our entry ports. No questions asked. This uncritical acceptance has severely crippled our discussion of all these vital topics. For example in education most of our discussion centers around literacy statistics and the need to have so many graduates, masters, Phd’s, and so many professionals --- engineers, doctors, etc.--- in a given country based on the standards in the industrially advanced countries. The central issue of curriculum, and even more fundamental issue of the purpose of education normally do not attract our attention; they have already been decided by the "advanced’ countries for us and our job is only to follow in their footsteps to achieve their level of progress.

Indeed they have. In the "first" world, education has become an extension of the capitalist system. Its purpose is to provide qualified workforce for its machinery of production and eager consumers for its products. Stated in a more polished form, the purpose of education is to provide for the economic prosperity of a country. Similarly on a personal level today the purpose of education is to be able to earn a respectable living.

While earning halal living and providing for the economic well being of a country are certainly important Islamic goals as well, the linking of education to financial goals is extremely unfortunate. It turns the centers of learning into mere vocational centers in their outlook and spirit. It degrades education and through it the society.

To bring home the pivotal but forgotten role of education we need to recall that there is a fundamental difference between human beings and animals. Instincts and physical needs alone can bring ants, bees, or herds of beasts together to live in a perfectly functioning animal society. Human beings do not function that way. They are not constrained by nature to follow only those ways that are necessary for the harmonious operation of their society. If they are to form a viable, thriving society, they must chose to do so. What drives that choice is the sharing of common goals, beliefs, values and outlook on life. Without a common framework binding its members, a human society cannot continue to exist; it will disintegrate and be absorbed by other societies. Further, the society must ensure that the common ground will continue to hold from generation to generation. This is the real purpose of education. The education system of a society produces the citizens and leaders needed for the smooth operation of that society, now and into the future. Its state of health or sickness translates directly into the health or sickness of the society that it is meant to serve.

Today we find many internal problems --- corruption, injustice, oppression, crippling poverty --- everywhere we turn in the Muslim world. If we think about it, we may realize that most of these problems are man-made. Which is another way of saying that they are largely traceable, directly or indirectly, to the education system that produced the people who perpetuate the problems. The rulers who sell out to foreign powers and subjugate their people; the bureaucrats who enforce laws based on injustice; the generals who wage war against their own people; the businessmen who exploit and cheat; the journalists who lie, sensationalize, and promote indecencies, they are all educated people, in many cases "highly" educated people. Their education was meant to prepare them for the roles they are playing in real life. And it has, although in a very unexpected way!

The problem plagues all layers of society. Why are Muslim communities in the grip of so much materialism today? What should we expect when our entire education system is preaching the gospel of materialism? Why have we effectively relegated Islam to a small inconsequential quarter in our public life? Because that is precisely where our secular education system has put it. Why in our behavior toward each other we see so little display of Islamic manners and morals? Because our imported education system is devoid of all moral training. Why our societies are sick? Because our education system is sick.

This is the real crisis of education. Before we got into this mess by importing from the Colonial powers what was current and popular, education in our societies was always the means of nurturing the human being. Moral training, tarbiya, was always an inalienable part of it. The ustaz,(teacher), was not just a lecturer or mere professional, but a mentor and moral guide. We remembered the hadith then, "No father has given a greater gift to his children than good moral training." [Tirmidhi]. Our education system was informed by this hadith. Our darul-ulooms still maintain that tradition but the number of students who pass through their gates is minuscule compared to the secular schools.

In the U.S. and Europe, the schools were started by the church. Later as forces of capitalism overtook them, they molded them into their image. Moral training was a casualty of that takeover. But capitalism and their political economy did need people trained to work under these systems. So citizenship training was retained as an important, though diminishing, component of the curriculum--- a religion-free subset of the moral training it displaced. Whatever civility we see here is largely a result of that leftover component. The imported versions in the Muslim countries, though, had even that component filtered out. And the results are visible.

We can solve our problem once we realize our mistakes. The first purpose of our education system must be to produce qualified citizens and leaders for the Islamic society. Tarbiya, real Islamic moral training, must be an integral part of it. This must be the soul of our education, not a ceremonial husk. All plans for improving our education will be totally useless unless they are based on a full understanding of this key fact. This requires revamping our curricula, rewriting our textbooks, retraining our teachers, and realizing that we must do all this ourselves. We do have a rich history of doing it. Are we finally willing to turn to our own in-house treasures to redo education the way it should always have been? (By Khalid Baig, albalagh.net)

These days, the internet has grown into a veritable wealth of information for college seekers. Everything from applying for financial aid to taking a course can be accomplished online. Now, a student can even obtain online degrees from one of many schools offering online education as a viable alternative to a traditional classroom education. How different are these two methods of teaching, and do either prove better for the student? There’s an abundance of information regarding online education, and distance education is becoming increasingly popular for students everywhere.

First and foremost, there are some obvious benefits in obtaining online instant degrees. For example, juggling a job, school and a home can be very difficult as far as commuting to the classroom every day.

With online education, you eliminate the need to attend classes, and instead access your coursework from an internet website. This presents an obvious benefit to the overworked college student because his commute is basically slashed in half. What’s more, many distance education programs allow students to complete the coursework any time during the day, while still adhering to overall deadlines. This allows for flexibility that a traditional classroom setting can ordinarily not provide.

However, is an online education truly comparable to the type of education a student would receive in an actual classroom? Many professionals in the field say yes, and certainly students seeking online degrees can confirm this response. Not only does online learning provide a stimulating environment for students, but it promotes even interaction among every student because everyone has a say in classroom discussions. What’s more, online education programs allow each student to learn with the methods that work best for them. Plus, many employers respect online degrees as much as a traditional college degree, so there’s really no difference in the amount of education or respect a student will receive when attending an online college.

While traditional colleges will never be eliminated, there’s definitely been an increase in the amount of students attending online colleges in recent years. Many people choose to follow the online education route for the diversity of material they can find, or because the teachers are more approachable via the internet than they would be in a classroom setting. Students definitely need discipline and self-motivation to succeed in obtaining online degrees, but there’s still the same level of help and support from teachers and students online that there would be in a classroom. What’s more, internet college students are learning skills that will be beneficial to them in the workforce and beyond because of the way technology is evolving today.

Online degrees are becoming an increasingly popular way to obtain a college education and many students are turning to online education because of the quality of material, convenience and the level of flexibility inherent in distance education programs. Because there’s no distinct differences between an online education and a traditional education, students are assured they are receiving the same kind of education that they would in a brick and mortar setting. There are definite benefits to online degree programs, and students with discipline and motivation can and will succeed greatly in online education programs.